Florida SB 700: the Farm Bill clause that ended fluoridation without naming fluoride, effective July 1, 2025

What it says#

Senate Bill 700 of Florida's 2025 session is the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' annual omnibus, described by its sponsors as the Florida Farm Bill. The enrolled act runs 92 sections and 66 pages as chapter 2025-22, and most of it has nothing to do with water: exemptions of department positions from the Career Service System, protections for housing agricultural workers on bona fide farms, a right of first refusal for the state on certain utility-owned land, permitting standards for electric vehicle charging stations, a beef marketing program. Two short sections near the middle are the reason it is in this directory.

Section 31 adds subsection (19) to s. 403.852, the definitions section of Florida's Safe Drinking Water Act: "'Water quality additive' means any chemical, additive, or substance that is used in a public water system for the purpose of: (a) Meeting or surpassing primary or secondary drinking water standards; (b) Preventing, reducing, or removing contaminants; or (c) Improving water quality." Section 32 adds subsection (8) to s. 403.859, the list of prohibited acts, whose lead sentence reads, "The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited and are violations of this act." The new item is one sentence: "The use of any additive in a public water system which does not meet the definition of a water quality additive as defined in s. 403.852(19)." Section 92 provides that "except as otherwise expressly provided in this act, this act shall take effect July 1, 2025."

That is the whole of it. The word fluoride does not appear in the enrolled bill, and the act creates no separate penalty or enforcement mechanism for the new item; it folds the prohibition into an existing list of violations of the drinking water act. Whether fluoride, added to prevent tooth decay, is a substance used for "improving water quality" is a question the statute leaves to whoever reads it. Everyone who has read it publicly has said no. ADA News reported on the day of signing that the bill "does not explicitly state the word 'fluoride,' but effectively bans the mineral," and quoted Governor DeSantis at his news conference: "Forcing [fluoride] in the water supply is basically forced medication on people."

The state's own position had been set earlier. On November 22, 2024 State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued a three-page Guidance for Community Water Fluoridation that "recommends against community water fluoridation due to the neuropsychiatric risk associated with fluoride exposure." It lists the Mexico City and Canadian prenatal exposure studies, ADHD associations, the 2024 NTP monograph, and the September 24, 2024 federal district court ruling on fluoridation under the Toxic Substances Control Act, and it concedes the monograph's own caveat that "there is insufficient data to determine if the lower level of 0.7 milligrams per liter, currently recommended for U.S. community water systems, has a negative impact on children's IQ." The guidance also gives the baseline the ban changed: "Based on self-reported data from 2023, it is estimated that more than 70% of Floridians on community water systems receive fluoridated water."

The ADA answered both the Surgeon General and the legislature. ADA News reported that the ADA called the Surgeon General's comments "misinformed and dangerous," noted that the NTP monograph "states that it does not address the practice of community water fluoridation at the low levels used in the U.S. and Canada," cited the CDC's estimate that fluoridation reduces tooth decay by 25 percent, and restated its support for fluoridation at 0.7 milligrams per liter.

Who it applies to#

Every public water system in Florida under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and anyone who uses, or causes the use of, an additive in one. The definition is written around purpose, so chemicals used to meet drinking water standards or to remove contaminants pass on the face of the text; the only additive anyone has identified as failing is fluoride. Private wells, bottled water, and anything a dental office applies or prescribes are outside chapter 403 entirely. For a practice, the population that matters is the more than 70 percent of Floridians on community systems who, by the state's 2023 count, had been drinking fluoridated water, and every child among them whose caries risk assessment assumed it.

What changed#

Until July 1, 2025 fluoridation in Florida was a local utility decision, and most systems had made it. Since then no public water system may add fluoride, the second statewide ban in the country after Utah's HB 81 two months earlier. The two laws differ in form: Utah's names fluoride, defines it and forbids it directly; Florida's never mentions it and instead defines what may be added, so that anything not on the list is out. The practical result for a Florida dentist is the same as in Utah, without Utah's companion provision letting pharmacists prescribe supplements. Both states relied on the same science argument, which the NTP monograph entry in this directory takes apart sentence by sentence, and both came before the FDA's 2025 action on ingestible fluoride, which has its own entry and bears on what a Florida child can be prescribed instead.

Where the source is#

The Florida Senate's bill page for SB 700 carries the full history with committee and floor votes and links to every version; the enrolled text is on that site in HTML and PDF, and the chapter law as filed with the Department of State is a PDF at laws.flrules.org. The Surgeon General's guidance is a PDF on the Florida Department of Health site. The ADA's reaction is in ADA News on ada.org. All are free to read. No secondary press account was used for any fact here.